


The Other Woman

by justanothersong



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, One Shot, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:12:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had known before, what this woman was. What she meant to the boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Woman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CobaltStargazer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/gifts).



She knows that there is someone else the first time he mentions her name.

Names are a strange thing with him, she notes. Rarely do they speak on a familiar basis, relying instead on surnames to talk to one another. 

Such a pity that they had both been saddled with his father’s.

She sometimes thinks that she might have had it changed, when the boy was still young, and hers as well, but by then there was so much history an her career to think about. And maybe she knew, somewhere in the back of her mind, that it would be better for him if he had no real trace of her attached to him, no thing to expose the sickness bred inside her that she might have passed on.

She hated her own about as much as she hated the other, some days.

But mostly it was his. William. She couldn’t hate him for leaving, that much she understood, but it was leaving the boy behind. What kind of man could do that to his own son? They both knew she was ill, much as she tried to insist she was coping with it fine. They both knew.

For him to turn tail and run was one thing. For him to leave the boy behind, as though a child were capable of… well. He had turned out well enough. Better than, really. Perhaps in spite of his name.

 

The name changes eventually, letters speaking of Alex, more friendly, more familiar. He writes of crossword puzzles and lectures, and she can’t help but feel the first real pangs of jealousy.

She had known before, what this woman was. What she meant to the boy.

But it was different now. Closer. And perhaps it is because she is older now, because her time with him is so far removed that it feels like it is fading, passing out of both their lives too rapidly and quiet for her liking.

She has a doctorate, he writes. She’s brilliant.

She had a boy of her own, one who had died. Only nine years old, near the age Spencer was when he had to stop being a child at all and spend more time taking care of his mother than she did taking care of him.

It hurts a little. Not in a bad way, more a solid little ache that seems to ground her.

And so she works harder. Tries to fight her way back, to a place where she can be a mother again.

Because that had been most important to her all along. Not her mind, like some seemed to think. Like William always thought. No, it hadn’t been that at all. And hadn’t she proven that? Hadn’t she sacrificed her clarity, to keep him safe, to keep him strong, when he was still sleeping inside her?

She hoped he understood that.

 

When he writes that she’s leaving, this other woman, this brilliant doctor, she can feel the sadness in the letter, as though soaked into the very ink he used. The even handwriting seemed even to shudder a little, tilting off course as he wrote the words.

Another one leaving.

Another one gone.

This one, though. This one hurts in a whole new way.

 

So she continues on her course, keeps working at it, keeps fighting to find her way. Because he still needs her, her boy. He still needs his mother.

And one day, maybe, she can be that again.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://literatec.tumblr.com), if you wish.
> 
> Please do not add this, or any of my posted works, to Goodreads. Thank you.


End file.
